New U.S. Space Strategy Announced

The U.S. government is emphasizing the need for a strong and competitive space industrial base, improved acquisition processes and coordination among the Pentagon and intelligence community in its new National Security Space Strategy.

The long-awaited strategy was supposed to be released last year; the document, dated January 2011, was announced Feb. 4.

The strategy echoes principles of the Obama administration’s National Security Space Policy, including increased cooperation with international partners and leadership in an international effort to promote standards of behavior for space operators—both in reducing debris and radiofrequency interference.

The Pentagon tracks about 22,000 man-made objects in orbit and “there may be as many as hundreds of thousands of additional pieces of debris that are too small to track with current sensors,” the strategy says. “Yet, these smaller pieces of debris can damage satellites in orbit.”

China’s 2007 anti-satellite (ASAT) demonstration continues to be a worry for U.S. policy makers because of the debris field and uncertainty regarding how Beijing might use this capability, if at all, in the future. Pentagon officials say it created more than 3,000 pieces of debris. A 2009 collision between a dead Russian Cosmos satellite and an Iridium commercial satellite created another 1,500 items of debris.

To underpin the U.S. capability to deter attack, operate in the event of an attack and continue to support military and economic interests, the development of future space-based capabilities is emphasized. Since the mid-1990s, space programs in the Pentagon and intelligence community have struggled owing to management missteps, overreaching for technology and woeful underfunding.

The strategy instructs the Pentagon and intelligence community to “revalidate current measures and implement new measures, where practicable, to stabilize the program acquisition more effectively and improve our space acquisition processes.” The strategy guides these departments to “reduce programmatic risk” by stabilizing acquisition processes and requirements-generation efforts. It also opens the door to embracing space projects that rely on cycle times far shorter than the decade-long wait for such capabilities as the Space-Based Infrared System.

In parallel, the acquisition community will facilitate the transition of scientific research technology “to the extent practicable” in domestic space programs.

To support these initiatives in the long term, the strategy pushes science, technology, engineering and math education as well as developing a “space cadre” of professionals in the military and intelligence community both to manage acquisition programs and develop tactics, techniques and procedures for operating in an increasingly congested space environment.

Space situational awareness is one area in need specifically mentioned in the strategy. The Air Force recently issued contracts worth $107 million to Lockheed Martin and Raytheon to produce a new design for a future Space Fence, a series of ground-based radars capable of tracking objects in space. The service also is operating its first Space-Based Space Surveillance (SBSS) satellite, designed by a Boeing/Ball Aerospace team solely to monitor other satellites in orbit.

Though the architecture is nascent, it is needed to “seek to deny adversaries meaningful benefits of attack,” the strategy states.

In the event of an attack on critical space assets, the strategy also instructs the Pentagon to craft alternate operational concepts that rely on land-, sea-, and air-based resources. “Our military and intelligence capabilities must be prepared to ‘fight through’ a degraded environment and defeat attacks targeted at our space systems and supporting infrastructure,” the strategy states. “We will include resilience as a key criterion in evaluating alternative architectures” for next-generation space assets.